


Look for Me by Moonlight

by RileyC



Category: The Highwayman - Alfred Noyes
Genre: F/M, Paranormal, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-28
Updated: 2012-07-28
Packaged: 2017-11-10 22:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RileyC/pseuds/RileyC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bess has a premonition or...something...and tries to change the course of that fateful night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look for Me by Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a prompt at comment_fic by icarus_chained: The Highwayman, Bess, the night her spirit climbs across the casement and rides down that ribbon of moonlight with him.

Bess shuddered and blinked; for a moment, she stared blindly about her room, unable to place it. She shivered again and drew her shawl tightly around her shoulders. _Someone just walked over my grave_ , she thought, and then scolded herself for such morbid fancies. The window was open; that was all.  
  
She drew the window shut and latched it but then glanced out at the road as it wound away, half-hidden by the mist and the clouds that scudded across the moon. _He_ would come tonight, if he could; if the King’s men weren’t running him to ground. An image flashed like lightning in her mind: musket fire and the terrified whinny of a horse, a coat of claret velvet torn and bloodied, blood-spattered lace, and fingers gone lax on the hilt of a jeweled rapier… Bess caught her breath and steadied herself with a hand against the window frame.  
  
Air, she needed air, she thought, and hastily unlatched the window and flung it open wide once more. Still with a hand against the frame, Bess leaned there and breathed deep of the cool, dark air until a calm had settled over her once more.  
  
She found her brush and a length of red silk ribbon and sat down on a stool by the window to run the brush through her long black hair. The rhythms soothed her and she picked up the ribbon, her fingers deftly plaiting it into her hair as she kept an eager eye trained on the landscape beyond the windows.  
  
The storm tossed the tree branches and hid the moon behind dark clouds. For one moment, though, that moon shone down clear and her breath caught as she glimpsed him at last, just now riding over the brow of the hill. Bess smiled, her pulse pounding harder the nearer he came, and nearer, until she could see him clear as day. Head thrown back, he whistled up to her and doffed his French cocked hat.  
  
“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart?” he whispered to her as he stretched up tall in his stirrups. “I’m after a prize tonight.” She leaned towards him from the casement, her hair cascaded down to brush his face. He caught a fistful of it and kissed it and laughed up at her. “Aye, love, it does warm me more than the gold.”  
  
She shivered again and rubbed her arms and realized he was staring at her now with some concern. “Bess, love, are you all right?”  
  
“Yes, yes, of course I am. I’m feeling cold tonight, is all.” Hadn’t he said something else? She would have sworn he’d told her to look for him by moonlight; he’d come for her by moonlight, though Hell should bar the way. “Don’t go,” she whispered to him. “Not tonight.”  
  
“Bess, love, it’s tonight or never.”  
  
“Then let it be never,” she said.  
  
“But the gold--”  
  
“Damn your gold!” she whispered, frightened and angry with it. “Is there no other prize you’d claim tonight?” she asked him and stood back, her chemise slipping off one bare white shoulder to tempt him.  
  
“Your father’ll have my hide if he finds me here, Bess.”  
  
“And who says he’ll find you here?” She glanced behind her once, then turned her back forever on this room and all it held as she gathered her skirts and climbed through the window to teeter on the narrow ledge outside.  
  
“Bess!” He caught himself and looked hurriedly around the innyard where something evil spied on them from the darkness. “You’re mad, girl. Go back inside before you hurt yourself.”  
  
“No. I’m leaving here tonight, with or without you. Be quick about your choice now.” That was all the warning she gave him as she jumped toward him.  
  
She could have missed him; she might have landed on the hard cobbles and broken her neck. His arms closed around her, though, and clasped her close. His lips trailed desperate kisses across her face and lips and chin.  
  
“What madness is this, love?” he murmured through the kisses, hands wound into her hair.  
  
She couldn’t tell him; not that she had seen his death, seen her own, over and over a thousand times. “No madness, good sir,” she told him, voice husky with promise. “If it’s a prize you want, you have one.” She made it a vow, solemn and true.  
  
He kissed her throat, her mouth again. “Where shall we go? What shall we do there?” he asked and she could feel the smile in his voice.  
  
Bess didn’t know, nor she did she care. “The moon looks bright and big enough.”  
  
He laughed, and then looked at her as if seeing her for the first time; as if volumes of wisdom shone in her eyes. He matched her now in look and tone and nodded. “Aye, that it does, my love. That it does.” He drew a thoughtful finger along the curve of her cheek, looked sharp at a rustle off near the stables, and wrapped his cloak around her. “Hang on tight, my love,” he told her as he gathered the reins of the horse.  
  
She wound her arms around him and held on for all her life was worth as he tugged on the reins in the moonlight and they galloped away to the West.


End file.
